Web - Born in Sweden, Luck relocated with his family to Kenya in 1921. He returned to Sweden at the age of 12 to be an apprentice to a blacksmith and carpenter, received a Swedish matriculation and then went to Witwatersrand University to study medicine, thereafter specialising in physiology …….. Later taught at Makerere and then Witwatersrand.

Obituary Prof. Cecil Percy Luck (BSc, 1943, BSc Hons, 1944, MBBCH, 1946) passed away on 18 July 2008, aged 91. Born in Sweden, Luck relocated with his family to Kenya in 1921. He returned to Sweden at the age of 12 to be an apprentice to a blacksmith and carpenter, received a Swedish matriculation and then came to Wits [Witwatersrand]to study medicine, thereafter specialising in physiology. Luck married in 1945 and took up the Chair in Physiology in the new pre-medical course for students at Fort Hare University. In 1953 Luck gained a scholarship to the Department of Physiology at Universify College London.Three years later he took up the chair of physiology at Makerere University Medical School in Uganda.Here he became increasingly involved in animal physiology as big game parks in western Uganda were being established and the efficient tranquillising of game was required. Luck established a research team that undertook drug-darting experiments that culminated in the use of M99 and its antidote, a breakthrough in large animal tranquillisation. In the 1950s, Luck developed his vision for a mobile field laboratory, the first of its kind in East Africa, drawing researchers from the USA, Scandinavia, Germany and Britain. In the late 1960s, Luck took up the chair of physiology at Wits Medical School. He moved later to the Wits Dental School where there was more scope for the animal research he sorely missed. Here he pursued studies of fruit bats,, keeping a roomful of them in his department! So enthusiastic was he that five PhDs on the unique metabolism of these creatures were produced by his department. Luck maintained his interest in carpentry and wrought-iron work throughout his life. In his fifties he learned Spanish in order to hone these skills under a Spanish master smith. He retired at 60 and set up a forge and carpentry shed from which he produced doors, balustrades and gates. He established a carpentry school and took on apprentices in wrought-iron work. Active in his forge until the age of 80, he was still working in copper at the age of 85. To the end of his life he remained a teacher, ever willing to share his knowledge and enthusiasm with anyone who truly wished to learn.